Mr. Alan Baldwin:

We touched on the question regarding who is the builder in so far as it is a complex question. From a layman's perspective, there is a perception that a main building contractor is like a general building contractor whereas my opinion is that the very large main building contractors we see around the city are, in essence, providing management contracting services and have staff who complement that expertise, whether they are engineers, project managers or site managers. In essence, they are not really designed to undertake construction work. They are not like a general building contractor. Someone could not hand them a hammer and ask them to do some work. I am sure they would make an attempt at it but really they are there because of their expertise in terms of management or their background, whether it is engineering or whatever it might be. It is stated in the Bill under section 5 that the Minister may prescribe regulations to divide the register in such different divisions of categories of registered members and class of work as may determined necessary and appropriate from time to time. All of us around this table recognise that there are lots of people involved in the construction of projects. As I said earlier, my hope is that when CIRI comes in, those subdivisions recognise all of the necessary elements to bring a building together and that we do not just allow a situation to arise where one building contractor is given the title "building contractor" and we are back to square one. We must recognise that in essence, its job is management contracting. It is there to provide a service and has any number of subcontractors that support it in its endeavours in terms of doing the work.

In respect of fire safety, it is really important that in those subcategories, there is a division for fire sealing and fire stopping. The situation regarding the house mentioned by Deputy O'Dowd is very regrettable. I know for a fact that if it was being built under BCAR, there would have been checks and measures in place whereby an engineer and architect would have come to inspect that element of the work at a specific stage. That is what BCAR is about. It is putting a system in place that provides for checks and balances.

Deputy Fergus O'Dowd:I am happy to follow that up.